It’s a classic casing of attacking
the symptom rather than the real ill—the spectacular rise in tuition driven by
an apathetic public, a disempowered legislature, and a broken governing
structure.

If, like me, you might take the idea
of public funding of higher education for granted as a sensible way to generate
an empowered citizenry, a well-trained workforce, and an intelligent society,
you need go no further than the ‘comments’ section of the Bee article cited above to remind yourself that there are plenty of
people out there who quite literally hate the idea of public institutions, public
contributions, and the public good.

A sampling of the comments:

“Want to make college more
affordable?1. Stop handing out free
money allowing colleges to feed at the trough. As long as you give students
free money to spend, the colleges are going to jack up the rates.2. Stop handing out money to criminal aliens.
They should not only be identified and deported, but should not be getting
in-State tuition.3. Stop funding
students who are in school for more than four years. If you can't get your
degree in four years, then you need motivation to get serious and get out”.

“STOP SPENDING (WASTING) MY MONEY! Every
new govt. spending program means more taxes to fund it. Those of us who have to
pay these ridiculous state taxes don't have any more left for you libs to steal”.

“Higher education (anything above
the 12th grade) is not a right. It is not a priveledge. It is a responsibility.
The responsibility of parents. And if the parents can't afford it, it's the
responsibility of the individual. Oh how I wish we lived in a time when society
demanded people take care of themselves”.

“College loans and assistance just
means that colleges don't have to compete with the product they offer. They
are, in fact, being subsidized by the American taxpayer and to add insult to
injury the price of their product increases at rate that is double that of
inflation. Not a dime more!”

“Lets be frank. This is nothing more
than a giveaway to minority poor by a minority legislator, who hates self made
hard working Californians and believes that the minority poor are once again
entitled to free stuff.Thus, another
program that encourages reliance on government and discourages personal
accountability”.

Some of these points are so commonly
thrown about in the public sphere that they’re worth answering, however
deliberately cynical and inaccurate.

In the first place of course, this
isn’t about giving students “money to spend”, but rather paying for tuition
(other less hysterical commentators wondered why it wouldn’t make more sense to
direct funds towards lowering tuition across the board, a very sensible
query).The reason, of course, why so
many students are at university for more than four years is precisely the
increased tuition burden.Many of my
students work multiple part- or full-time jobs whilst studying.Cuts to higher education over the past
decades has also reduced course offerings, meaning that it can be difficult for
students to get into the courses they needed, a difficulty which is compounded
when they are forced to juggle university commitments with those to their
employers.

Then of course, there is the
anti-tax whine about “my money” being “stolen”.This mentality disregards the fact that earlier generations—particularly
baby boomers—were beneficiaries of massive public investment and support, of
the very sort they are seeking to deny successive generations.In most societies, there is some recognition
that individual wealth was produced by combined efforts and required community
support.The corollary is that as
individuals we are required to give back to the community, and the most
sensible manner of doing so is through taxes.

Then there are those who would have
us return to a society entirely defined by an individual’s social class at
birth, who believe that higher education should be a “privilege” available to
those whose parents can support them.The
fondness for a society which “demanded people take care of themselves” takes no
account of the abuse, inequality, and exploitation that such a society metes
out to its weaker members.

In between was the genius who thought
s/he was exposing something hidden by pointing out that public universities are
subsidised by the taxpayers.That is, of
course, the whole point of public institutions.The idea being that an education system which saw itself as a
marketplace would model itself on the Ivies, and turn a gigantic profit by
educating a handful of supremely wealthy and privileged people, thereby doing
no duty by the public.Incidentally, a
central reason for the increase in the “price” of universities’ “product” has
to do with disinvestment from the public.The cost of educating students has gone up, but more importantly, the
support from the public has declined precipitately, shoving the burden of that
cost onto students.

And then there are those who see
racial conspiracy in every move, unaware as they wallow in their hatred that
California’s demographic shifts will mean that they will themselves shortly
become minorities in an increasingly diverse society, in which more than ever
before the identification and pursuit of a shared public interest will define
our ability to live a dream that is restricted by neither class, race, nor the
burdens of the tired hatred that defines too much of today’s political
discourse.

About Me

I am from Northern California, and am the fifth generation of my family to have lived in the Golden State. Now I live next-door in the Silver State, where I research and write about colonialism and decolonization in Africa, teach European, African, environmental, and colonial history, and write this blog, mostly about politics, sometimes about history, and occasionally about travels or research.